The company also revised 3DS sales expectations from 18 million to just 13.5 million units sold

While gamers have spent months comparing the new Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles before and after their November releases, Nintendo's Wii U remains forgotten, as if it doesn't even qualify to be apart of the console race.

A new statement from Nintendo has made this point even clearer. The game company announced that its anticipated units sold from April 2013 to March 2014 will be changed from a previous 9 million to just 2.8 million.

This represents a staggering 69 percent drop. Wii U software doesn't look any better, with sales expectations falling from a previously-reported 38 million to just 19 million.

But at least Nintendo still has the 3DS handheld system to fall back on, right? Wrong. The company also had to revise those sales expectations, dropping from 18 million to just 13.5 million units sold.

As for the original Wiis, Nintendo is cutting their sales expectations from a previous 2 million to 1.2 million.

With so many sales revisions, Nintendo is also decreasing its financial forecast, which includes a loss of 25 billion yen ($240 million USD) -- down from a previously-reported 55 billion yen profit.

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said in an interview that Nintendo will have to make some major changes, possibly including an entirely new business structure. The company is looking to focus on mobile devices like smartphones, reportedly.

Iwata attempted to explain his company's financial and sales shortcomings in a statement you can read here, but this is just a taste:

Giving a detailed explanation on our sales performance in and leading up to the year-end sales season by platform, Nintendo 3DS continued to show strong sales in the Japanese market. The unit sales for Nintendo 3DS in the previous calendar year amounted to approximately 4.9 million units, falling short of our aim of five million units by a small margin. However, as I explained before, given that every gaming device from the year 2000 onwards apart from Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS did not reach sales of four million units even in their peak years, we can say that the sales figure for Nintendo 3DS in the last calendar year was indeed very high. However, outside Japan, while its market share increased as we continued to release compelling titles throughout the year, Nintendo 3DS did not reach our sales targets in the overseas markets, and we were ultimately unable to achieve our goal of providing a massive sales boost to Nintendo 3DS in the year-end sales season. Using the U.S. market as an example, Nintendo 3DS became the top-selling platform in the last calendar year, according to NPD, an independent market research company, with its cumulative sales exceeding 11.5 million units; however, the estimated annual sales of the Nintendo 3DS hardware remain significantly lower than our initial forecast at the beginning of the fiscal year. In Europe, while the individual markets showed different results, France was the only market in which we experienced relatively strong sales, and we failed to attain our initial sales levels by a large margin in other countries.

Wii U sales, on the other hand, showed some progress in the year-end sales season as we released various compelling titles from the summer onwards, launched hardware bundles at affordable price points and also performed a markdown of the hardware in the U.S. and European markets; however, they fell short of our targeted recovery by a large margin. In particular, sales in the U.S. and European markets in which we entered the year-end sales season with a hardware markdown were significantly lower than our original forecasts, with both hardware and software sales experiencing a huge gap from their targets. In addition, we did not assume at the beginning of the fiscal year that we would perform a markdown for the Wii U hardware in the U.S. and European markets. This was also one of the reasons for lower sales and profit estimates.

This is a red herring. If you want to add "old games" to the list of reasons to buy a PC instead of a console, go right ahead. The reasons to buy a console remain. The buyer can decide which is more important (hint: most people game on consoles).

There are more people gaming on a PC at any given time than on consoles. Competitive PC gaming is practically the national sport of Korea, for instance. Steam as approximately as many users as Xbox Live. World of Tanks alone has as many users as Xbox Live, for that matter. China, Philippines, and other Asian countries have their gaming dominated by PCs in net cafes. Free-to-play MMOs are huge in that market.

Then there are the professional DOTA2 and LOL leagues, where people can actually make huge money if they are good. Or SimRaceway, which also has cash prizes for winning races. Professional gaming is much bigger on PC than on consoles.

Add in the indie games market and the modding community, and consoles don't even come close to touching the scope and depth of the PC gaming market. And since many of these are either free or low cost, the cost difference between a PC and a console is quickly made up.

Maybe most people YOU know game on consoles, but overall, the PC gaming market is larger, has more players, and makes more money.

Up until just a few months ago, WoW was making in excess of $200 million per month. They have been bleeding players recently and are down to a "mere" $90 per month. Compare that to EA's 2013 revenues of $1.3 billion on consoles and $900 million on PC. So EA had approx. $400 million more on console than on PC, but 2 months of WoW subs covered that. Activision made more off of WoW than they did on any of their AAA console titles. WoW had been saving Activision several years when they didn't have big console numbers.

Console blockbusters make great headlines. $500 million in 24 hours is headline material, but I'd take $200 million per months for several years over that. It just isn't as sexy for news headlines when it happens every month. The thing is, most PC game sales are not from retail brick-and-mortar stores, so NDP and other retail tracking outfits don't have proper data. PC game sales have been mostly digital download for years now. Besides, game sales are no longer the bulk of PC game revenues anyway. Subscriptions, and micro-transactions in free games, are where the money is.

Steam is growing fast too. Since Oct, they have apparently added 10 million new users. They are making it easier for indy devs to publish too. The Steam Greenlight process is going away, which means that devs no longer have to get the community to notice them and ask for Valve to publish them, so I expect both the number of games and number of users to grow significantly in the near future.

What this causes is fewer options on PC for great game experiences. It's a simple point I made to a simple question. A well-known, provable fact that has never not been true.

In fact, the numbers you see in the research above are at an all-time high due to improvements made in the PC gaming space (and aging of the last console generation).

Like I already said, right now I only game on PC. I am no console ideologue. I was just stating a simple fact to make a simple point to a simple question. That's all that's going on here. I promise.

As an aside , WoW is an anomaly, which is why you brought it up (like the 360 hw failure thing). It's not indicative of the space and it still doesn't raise PC gaming revenues to a level that would change my point. Blizzard found a lifehack and is literally just siphoning cash out of people's brains for no reason. The game is tedious and boring, which is why I don't play it and why it was so hilarious for Reclaimer to mention it and "boring FPS" in the same post.

I've already addressed guesses companies like Gartner make. They are based on retail sales, which the PC games industry has basically left behind. Console only have a handful of blockbuster titles each year. That doesn't come close to the hundreds of millions of dollars spend in cash shops alone. It is really easy to get an estimate of how many console gamers there are, based on console sales. Titles like LoL alone have more players than there were Xbox 360s sold in total. I don't think you realise how large the Asian market is, and how little presence consoles have there, except Japan where the PS and Nintendo are popular. But the rest of Asia plays PCs almost exclusively.

Maple Story, Lineage, Perfect World, etc. have tens of millions of players each. There are ultra-competitive players in these games who spend hundreds per month on potions and other consumables in the cash shops in order to win at PvP. There is a reason why these games are called pay-to-win. None of this is accounted for in Gartner's PC game figures.

I should have read that business wire article before I typed the last response. It estimated 54 million "enthusiast" gamers, defining those who spend over $1000 on a gaming PC. Apparently, you didn't actually read the article before you linked it, just getting to the 54 million part and think that wins you argument. What about the much larger number who spend less than $1000 on a PC, or who game on a PC that was bought for other purposes, but still get used for gaming? What about the tens of millions of Asian players who play from net cafes? Many of the games in the Asian market allow players to rent game time by the hour so they play without owning the game or the PC it is played on. There are Chinese MMORPGs that have over 100 million accounts.

You have an interesting style. Anything that defeats your talking points, just gets thrown out. The Xbox 360? Oh well those failures don't count. World of Warcraft and other cash-cow MMO's? Oh those are an "anomaly", they don't count either.

So I'll just adopt your proven strategy: Everything you are saying doesn't count.

What are you talking about? Your argument is that a console has more AAA titles than a PC. That is AT BEST accurate if you count only games released within the window of a consoles lifetime. You can't just discount the hundreds of games already released on one platform to aid your argument.

quote: This is a red herring. If you want to add "old games" to the list of reasons to buy a PC instead of a console, go right ahead. The reasons to buy a console remain. The buyer can decide which is more important (hint: most people game on consoles).

It's extremely tedious to have to explain the discussion's minutiae just so you can follow along. This was an extremely simple point I was making, and somehow it turned into all this.

- I said consoles get more games.- You said "nuh uh!"- I said yes, consoles get more games during their lifetimes.- You said not if you count games that came out before their lifetimes.- I said that's a red herring.- You said "nuh uh!"

But it's true. Once again, something I already said is if you're going to put an "old games" bullet point in the Why Buy A PC Instead list, feel free. But that doesn't change anything about my Why Buy A Console list.

quote: If you want to add "old games" to the list of reasons to buy a PC instead of a console, go right ahead. The reasons to buy a console remain.

Obviously if you buy a console, you're not buying it to play old games. You're buying it to play current and new ones, more of which are put on consoles. Again, very simple point I was making. It's not this difficult.

But consoles do not get more games, even in there lifetimes. There are thousands of PC games made very year. The indy market is huge, and things like Kickstarter have made it so indy games can even have a large budget now. Plus, there pis more freedom in the indy market. It ranges all the way from casual Farmville-like games, to ultra-hardcore stuff that would make console players cry for mommy. Since they are making the games they like for people like them, there is no bowing to shareholders who want proven formulas. That alone makes PC gaming better. Innovation. Not being stuck with CoD 14 and the like is a huge plus.

A lot of the old-school RPG makers that made huge games with hundreds of hours of play back in the 80s and 90s are back in the game with self-published crowdsourced games now. Chris Roberts is making the space combat sim he always wanted to do but never could achieve do to technological limitations. Stardock is doing another Galactic Civilizations, one of the premier 4x space strategy series. You can't find stuff like that on the consoles.

quote: It's extremely tedious to have to explain the discussion's minutiae just so you can follow along. This was an extremely simple point I was making, and somehow it turned into all this.

Because what you're saying isn't true

quote: - I said consoles get more games. - You said "nuh uh!" - I said yes, consoles get more games during their lifetimes. - You said not if you count games that came out before their lifetimes. - I said that's a red herring. - You said "nuh uh!"

Why wouldn't you count games before a consoles lifetime? You're arbitrarily throwing out a huge library of games.

quote: Obviously if you buy a console, you're not buying it to play old games. You're buying it to play current and new ones, more of which are put on consoles. Again, very simple point I was making. It's not this difficult.

Of course you're not, that's because most of them CAN'T. This is not a selling point for a console, it is a limitation.